Book Blogger Confessions: Book Budgets

 

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme that posts the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month, where book bloggers "confess" and vent about blogging/bookish topics. Feel free to share, vent and offer solutions.

Just keep it respectful - no bashing authors or other bloggers! If you want to participate just grab our button and include it in your post with a link to either Midnyte Reader or For What It's Worth. We will be providing a linky at the end of our posts so people can "hop" to see all the participants answers.

Question: Do you have a monthly book budget? How has it changed since you started blogging? Do you get more free books now that you have access to publishers/authors/other bloggers or is your book buying budget even higher than when you started?

I think this question is so funny because the prevailing opinion is that book bloggers are swimming in a sea of freebies, never spending money on books….greedy things that we are.

That could not be further from the truth. At least for me and my blogger friends. I spend MORE money on books now that I’m blogging. I do get ARC’s, mostly at BEA rather than through publishers, but the majority of my books are still purchases.

Sometimes an ARC ends up costing me even more money.

I’ll just take one book as an example. I received an ARC of Enclave by Ann Aguirre from the publisher for review two years ago. I became obsessed with this book and bought a finished copy for myself and had several giveaways. I probably ended up purchasing a total of 10 copies and I do that all the time when I love something.

I loaned my Enclave ARC to a handful of other bloggers, who in turn bought the book (dispelling the myth that ARC’s ruin sales) and several of them also had giveaways buying even more copies. So there you have it. One ARC resulted in close to 20 book sales.

Yes, there are some ARC’s where I don’t enjoy the book and pass it along but for every book that I do like, I buy a finished copy.

I went a little off track there but you get the idea. (because I get mad when people keep implying that all book bloggers are out for free books – the majority of us are out to help share our love of books and let people know about awesome authors. End rant.)

Sooooo back to the actual question!

I don’t have a specific budget and I’ve been trying to reign it in some. Mostly because I have more books than I could possibly read right now rather than trying to save money. Some months I spend nothing – while another month may be closer to $60-$70+. I guess an average would be somewhere between $20-$40.

Before I started blogging I think I bought one or two books every few months. I wasn’t even much of a reader – one year I only read 6 books total - so I’m not even sure how I stumbled into book reviewing!

I have an incredible group of blogger friends that share their books with me. Lena Addicted 2 Novels, Julie – My 5 Monkey’s, Pam – Midnyte Reader. Fictitious Delicious. I apologize if I’m forgetting anyone but basically book bloggers are AWESOME with the sharing!!

How about you? Do you have a book budget? Any tips for saving money?

Question for December 17th: Dear Santa! What would you put on your blogging/bookish wish list if the sky was the limit? A new blog design? A house filled with new bookshelves? Even MORE books?

**** 2013 Book Blogger Confession topics are up!